


Liszt, Writing

by AsadMinQamar



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: Gen, Piano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:29:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsadMinQamar/pseuds/AsadMinQamar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writing music is like listening to Chopin play his Fantasie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liszt, Writing

1847, Kiev

Inspiration comes in steady waves, a bit like the bass in one of Haydn’s piano sonatas. It crescendos occasionally for a few measures before fading back to support the melody, and occasionally it positively thunders. It’s like the heavy octaves in Chopin’s Fantasie, pounding down the keyboard until the strings nearly snap and then it ebbs and flows into the arpeggio, it becomes largo.

Writing is a bit like that Fantasie, but only when played by Chopin himself.

Franz can sit at the keyboard and play- fiddle around with this key or that, modulate and twist, flip his music upside down and play it rubato, or throw whatever sheets he may be scribbling on across the room all together and let the passion take him.

But writing- the writing is difficult. When it comes to putting notes on a page, he questions himself and only then does he think that maybe this interval would do better as a fourth rather than a third, and is it too bold to allow the left hand to take the melody here?

He scowls and curses at his pen sometimes, when it sputters ink on his page and he knows it’s because they aren’t meant to be used vertically the way he does on the music rack, but that doesn’t stop him from getting upset about it when he’s feeling particularly inspired.

Writing is a bit like making love, although slightly more thrilling.

He chooses the tempo, where it will rise and climax, and when it will fall into an andante pianissimo once again. His fingers dance along ivory smoother and more pale than a woman’s bosom, and then along keys darker than the darkest black. The piano sings for him melodies and harmonies no human voice could ever sustain and the love he puts into his work is returned tenfold, or a thousandfold.

But it takes time to get there- to the point where simple composition becomes actual creation and Franz isn’t just making noise anymore, he’s bringing sound to life. He’s bringing poetry to life.

That point is not right now though.

Franz mutters a curse and lowers the fall over the keys. His hands lay flat over the dark cover and he traces the grooves in the wood. They’re small, too shallow and thin to be noticed by the naked eye, but Franz knows every dip and crack. Like beauty marks on a lover, they’re intimacies that make the piano his and no one else’s.

Even though he’s only had this particular piano for less than a month, he knows it better than most men know their wives or parents, their children. And he wonders about other musicians sometimes. Other composers or pianists. He wants to know if they think on the instruments of their trade as fondly as he does, if the same love exists.

He thinks, probably not. He can’t imagine there’s anyone quite like him in the world, not even Chopin with all of his eccentricities.

No one loves the Piano quite as much as Liszt. It is, quite simply, impossible.


End file.
